Clayton Koelb's masterful translation improves upon its predecessors intwo ways: it renders Mann into American (not British) English, and itremains true to Mann's original text without sacrificing fluency. ForAmerican readers, this is the translation of choice. "Backgrounds and Contexts" includes Mann's working notes, which allowstudents to observe the author's creative process. The notes areavailable here for the first time in English. Illuminating selections from Mann's essays and letters are alsoreprinted, as are period maps of Munich, Venice, and the Lido. "Criticism" includes six essays—by Andre von Gronicka, Manfred Dierks, T.J. Reed, Dorrit Cohn, David Luke, and Robert Tobin—sure to stimulateclassroom discussion. A Chronology and Selected Bibliography are also included.

"Death in Venice," by Nobel Prize-winning author Thomas Mann, is one of the most popular and widely taught works of German literature. It is also a complex work of art that challenges its readers. This reference is a convenient guide to the novella. In addition to providing a plot summary, the volume helps students and general readers discover the literary and intellectual qualities of Mann's famous story. The guide alsos surveys Mann's life and works, compares "Death in Venice" to Mann's other fiction, as well as to works by other writers, summarizes the events Mann relates, and discusses the genesis, editions, and English translations of his novella. Mann's literary and non-literary influences are considered, along with his narrative style, and the historical, cultural, and sociological factors surrounding "Death in Venice." The guide also explains how the issues Mann treated remain current today, and reviews the critical and scholarly reception of his text.

Published in 1913, Thomas Mann's Death in Venice is one of the most widely read novellas in any language. In the 1970s, Benjamin Britten adapted it into an opera, and Lucchino Visconti turned it into a successful film. Reading these works from a philosophical perspective, Philip Kitcher connects the predicament of the novella's central character to Western thought's most compelling questions. In Mann's story, the author Gustav von Aschenbach becomes captivated by an adolescent boy, first seen on the lido in Venice, the eventual site of Aschenbach's own death. Mann works through central concerns about how to live, explored with equal intensity by his German predecessors, Schopenhauer and Nietzsche. Kitcher considers how Mann's, Britten's, and Visconti's treatments illuminate the tension between social and ethical values and an artist's sensitivity to beauty. Each work asks whether a life devoted to self-sacrifice in the pursuit of lasting achievements can be sustained, and whether the breakdown of discipline undercuts its worth. Haunted by the prospect of his death, Aschenbach also helps reflect on whether it is possible to achieve anything in full awareness of our finitude and in knowing our successes are always incomplete.

Kurze's book provides fresh and sometimes startling insights into both famous and little-known episodes in Mann's life and into his writing--the only realm in which he ever felt free. It shows how love, death, religion, and politics were not merely themes in "Buddenbrooks, The Magic Mountain, " but were woven into the fabric of his existence. 40 photos.

Featuring his world-famous masterpiece, "Death in Venice," this new collection of Nobel laureate Thomas Mann's stories and novellas reveals his artistic evolution. In this new, widely acclaimed translation that restores the controversial passages that were cut out of the original English version, "Death in Venice" tells about a ruinous quest for love and beauty amid degenerating splendor. Gustav von Aschenbach, a successful but lonely author, travels to the Queen of the Adriatic in search of an elusive spiritual fulfillment that turns into his erotic doom. Spellbound by a beautiful Polish boy, he finds himself fettered to this hypnotic city of sun-drenched sensuality and eerie physical decay. Also included in this volume are eleven other stories by Mann: "Tonio Kroger," "Gladius Dei," "The Blood of the Walsungs," "The Will for Happiness," "Little Herr Friedmann," "Tobias Mindernickel," "Little Lizzy," "Tristan," "The Starvelings," "The Wunderkind," and "Harsh Hour." All of the stories collected here display Mann's inimitable use of irony, his subtle characterizations, and superb, complex plots. For more than seventy years, Penguin has been the leading publisher of classic literature in the English-speaking world. With more than 1,700 titles, Penguin Classics represents a global bookshelf of the best works throughout history and across genres and disciplines. Readers trust the series to provide authoritative texts enhanced by introductions and notes by distinguished scholars and contemporary authors, as well as up-to-date translations by award-winning translators. From the Trade Paperback edition.

This Norton Critical Edition looks at the full range of opinion and interpretation of this major play from its origins to the present day, from its "genius" (William Hazlitt) to its being a "hateful work, although Shakespearean throughout" (Samuel Taylor Coleridge), and beyond. The Norton Critical Edition is based on the 1623 First Folio text, the only authoritative edition of the play. The editor has modernized spelling but preserves, for the most part, the original lineation and characteristically heavy punctuation. The text of Measure for Measure is accompanied by a full introduction, a note on the text, textual variants, and related illustrations. "Sources" considers the probable, primary, and analogous sources Shakespeare drew upon while composing Measure for Measure, including excerpts from G. B. Giraldi Cinthio's Hecatommithi and The Tragedy of Epitia, King James I's Basilikon Doron, and-most directly-George Whetstone's The History of Promos and Cassandra. "Criticism" collects seventeen important commentaries on Measure for Measure spanning four centuries, including, among others, those by Alexander Pope, Charlotte Lennox, Samuel Johnson, Elizabeth Inchbald, A. C. Bradley, G. Wilson Knight, Jonathan Dollimore, and Marliss C. Desens. "Adaptations and Responses" reprints alternative versions of the play: William D'avenant's The Law Against Lovers (1662), Charles Gildon's Measure of Measure, or, Beauty the Best Advocate (1700), and Charles Marowitz's postmodern version (1975). A Selected Bibliography is also included.

The fifteen works collected in The Norton Introduction to the ShortNovel, Third Edition, represent a wide range of periods andinternational voices. Designed with the undergraduate in mind, theanthology includes a helpful introduction by Professor Beaty thatdefines the short novel in contrast to the short story and the longernovel and explores the formal and thematic corollaries of thisparticular literary form. Additionally, a short biographical headnoteprecedes each selection to prepare the reader to experience,appreciate, and understand the works as fully as possible during afirst reading. A brief critical afterword follows each novel.
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